Cities by Design: The Social Life of Urban Form

by Fran Tonkiss

Who makes our cities, and what part do everyday users have in their design? This book powerfully shows that city-making is a social process and examines the close relationship between the social and physical shaping of urban environments. With cities taking a growing share of the global population, urban forms and urban experience are crucial for understanding social injustice, economic inequality and environmental challenges. Current processes of urbanization too often contribute to intensifying these problems; cities, likewise, will be central to their solution. Focusing on a range of cities in developed and developing contexts, Cities by Design highlights major aspects of contemporary urban growth, density and sustainability; inequality, segregation and diversity; informality, environment and infrastructure. Offering keen insights into how the shaping of our cities is shaping our lives, Cities by Design provides a critical exploration of key issues and debates that will be invaluable to students and scholars in sociology and geography, environmental and urban studies, architecture, urban design and planning.

Genres: Urban Studies, Sociology, Urbanism, Nonfiction, Cities, Urban Planning, Urban

224 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2014

Reviews

[Tara Brabazon · Rating 3 out of 5]

A strong book that demonstrates the benefits of interdisciplinarity in the study of urbanity. There is attention to sustainability, gentrification, but also structural injustices. As an introduction to the sociological inflection of urban studies, this is great.

For me, the areas of future development from this book are those intangible, alternative 'makings' of a city. There are frequent points made about the 'lived city' and the 'ordinary city.' But examples of how, when and why disempowered communities create both disorder and community would be useful.

A well written and researched book. Recommended.

[Andy · Rating 2 out of 5]

To my inexpert view, this book is a research summary and seemingly the culmination of much academic study by the author. If your goal is to understand the past 50 years of thinking and categorisation of social urbanisation issues, or if you require a reference work as background then this is great.
But i was not satisfied by this. There is a lot of time spent stating the obvious (if you put more dwellings on a plot there is greater density), pointing out what you will already know (generally, the wealthy have better conditions, the poor have worse) and that much depends on policy and planning where these haven't been corrupted (which they almost always have been). On a final note, the written language used by the author is overly academic and quite awkward to read, most people will find this very frustrating.

[Gordon · Rating 4 out of 5]

My review of the book was published in 2015 in the American Journal of Sociology (vol. 20, no. 4: 1264-1266) and is available here:
http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/...

[Alexander · Rating 4 out of 5]

A few slow parts aside, this was a well-researched read on the social and political dimensions of how the built environment impacts social life.